All students have unique learning styles that best suit them. The condition known as autism affects the way you process information, which in turn alters the way you learn. Because many autistic students need to learn in an individualized way, schools isolate them from the rest of the student body. Schools should place students with autism in the same classes as “normal” students because integration benefits everyone involved. Much evidence reveals the benefits of integrating autistic students, but arguments against unification continue to arise. The claim that autistic students hinder the progress of the rest of the class remains to this day one of the biggest arguments against integration in the classroom. Some observations point out that autistic students may be prone to disrupting the classroom environment, wasting valuable class time and commandeering the teacher's attention. Many try to blame these outbursts on the unique social skills that accompany autism, but the real problem is that typical school environments disadvantage autistic students. Some educators have the false belief that autistic children will never learn and choose to misbehave (Romagnoli 8). This belief illustrates the general lack of understanding of autism and demonstrates that we need to better educate our teachers about what autism really is. Having a better understanding of autism should enable teachers to create a supportive environment for all students, rather than ostracising students with autism. Some evidence suggests that having classes of students differ in learning abilities is actually beneficial to all students, rather than harmful. To explore this idea, an eleven year old girl n...... middle of paper ...... serves to justify her judgment. Recent statistics show that nearly one in eighty children born today in the United States will have autism. Does it make sense to exclude autistic students from mainstream classes when such a high percentage of children suffer from autism spectrum disorders? According to Douglas C. Baynton, author of Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History, “Disability is culturally constructed rather than natural and timeless” (Baynton 52). Baynton means that, as a society, we label each other's differences as flaws rather than accepting that everyone is different in their own way. By integrating autistic students into classrooms from an early age we can reshape how autism is perceived; autistic students can demonstrate their ability to learn and others can learn to see autism for what it really is, just a difference.